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Take Care of Business on the Cloud

By now, you have probably heard of cloud computing. You may have even seen television commercials advertising cloud computing services. While there are a variety of services offered through cloud computing providers, everything has been shorted to just "the cloud." The cloud is a collection of third-party, secured servers where a company can story its data, host its website, or use productivity software without the high cost of having to buy the hardware and the software. The company leases its storage space through the cloud and only pays for what it uses.

To get an idea of how the cloud can benefit a business, think of how a company pays for electricity. Instead of every company having to buy their own power plant, they just pay for a metered service through the local electric company. The cloud is a metered computer storage service that saves a company money and allows the company to alter its storage capacity based on its needs. As a company grows, it can lease more storage space without the additional costs of having to buy more servers. If the company decides it does not need the extra space, it can just release its additional space back into the cloud. The cloud allows a company to conduct business without ever having to worry about the potentially crippling costs of maintaining its computer network.

Cloud technology is becoming the way of the future for the corporate world. With the cloud, you can have an entire computer network without having to invest in servers, cabling, or an army of IT support technicians. Your staff would be able to access critical data from anywhere in the world, and you could take on satellite locations that would all be able to share the company network. With cloud computing, a small business could have the same network functionality as a large corporation at a fraction of the cost.

To become more familiar with cloud computing and its benefits, take a look at the following links.

What Cloud Computing Really Means:A short history of cloud computing followed by fairly comprehensive definitions of the various kinds of cloud computing in use around the world.

Clash Of The Clouds:An interesting view of the future of cloud computing that sees Microsoft getting involved in epic battles with larger Internet companies such as Google for control over the storage of the world's data.

The Internet Industry Is On A Cloud - Whatever That May Mean: The Wall Street Journal does what it does best by putting a financial perspective on the future of the cloud computing world. One of the more entertaining elements of this article is how unashamed the Wall Street Journal is about not understanding cloud technology at all.